Seclusion
by Gem Awards
Summary: He never wanted the life his father had chosen for him. Fate had a different plan for Carlisle Cullen. This story relives Carlisle's earlier days, before he met the Volturi or made the first member of his family. Entry for Gem Awards Opal Challenge.


Disclaimer: We don't own Twilight.

I didn't want anything to do with my father's hunting parties for the supernatural. So I had gone off to school to learn a higher education. Not even that could gage me the approval I craved from my father.

So I ended up taking on the role of the leader of his hunting parties. I however, had a very different approach on how to go on about it. I was my belief that one was innocent until proven guilty. My father saw evil in almost everything, I was much more naïve. I suppose it was my naive ness that caused me my life back then.

A nest of vampires in the sewers had become known to me. So a few fellow hunters and I headed out one night to destroy their evil. Little could have been done to prepare me for what happened next.

Once we stepped through the entrance of the sewer. One of the torches was snuffed out just as an ear piercing scream filled the darkness that was surrounding us. An inhuman screech echoed through the dank tunnel. The smell of human feces and urine was soon over powered by the metallic smell of blood. Two of my followers had just been killed by the vampire we were hunting. I pushed onward through the dank darkness, hoping that I some however could purge this demon from our city.

It however, was that foolishness that would plunge me into my own hell. The vampire I was hunting was hiding in the shadows that danced around me. At the last second I decided to turn back with the remaining men I had and call it a night. I nodded good-night to all of my friends in our party, as I was the last one in the tunnel. I barely uttered a sound at Joshua as I felt his cold body press against mine as his venom filled teeth torn into the soft flesh of my neck. The coppery smell of my own blood made my head spin. I heard Joshua scream my name.

"Carlisle!"

Everything went black after that.

**SSSSSSSSSSSS**

I woke up hours later, the musky smell of dirt was in the air I glance around the room I was in and realized I was in an old cellar. My body felt as if someone had lit it a flame. Bringing my fingers up to my neck I felt the warm stickiness of my own blood.

The demon I had been hunting hadn't killed me, but had made me into one of his kind. My eyes darted to the door of the cellar. The fire within me was burning hotter; it would only take a little longer before I lost myself in the flames.

Using what strength I had left I made my way over to a pile of old rotten potatoes and hid myself beneath them. I prayed that no one would find my hiding place here. If they did they would kill me.

Hiding for three days wasn't easy; I could ignore the smell of the rotten potatoes that lay above me. There wasn't however, anywhere for me to hide from the flames that licked up and down my body. Until the inferno seem to center and build in the center of my chest. My heart beat rapidly within as if it were willing to burst from my body to escape the fire that was raging inside me.

Then as quickly as it all had begun it stop.

My eyes snapped open as I sat up suddenly. I pulled in a breath of air that my body not longer craved on instinct. There was a dull ache in the back of my throat. Removing myself from my hiding place, I stood up and made my way to the cellar door. There was no light shining through the hole in the wooden door, which could only mean that the sun was no longer out.

I knew that remaining in the musky cellar would not be wise yet; I soon realized that neither was stepping out into the night.

Once I was outside, a thrumming sound filled my ear. It took me mere seconds to realize what it was I was hearing as the ache in my throat turned to a burning that I knew I had to put an end to. The thrumming sound got louder as I walked by one of the house along the cobble stone street, _Thump-thump, thump_. The rhythmic sound was coming from the heart of the people who lived there. A man and a woman slept in a room downstairs while two small children lay upstairs sleeping.

Knowing what the sound was I quickly made my way out of the town that I had grown-up in, never to return home.

Time and time I try to end my un-natural life, only to find it impossible. _Seclusion_ away from humans was the only way I knew how to keep myself from becoming the blood craving monster that my father and I had hunted.

Days had turned into weeks when I happened upon a cave deep in the woods. It was there that I decided that I would stay secluded away from everything and everyone, until my new body had given up and died on me. Starvation would be my way to my freedom from this hell.

Weeks had then turned into months without me feeding on a human. The fire that was burning the back of my throat had only intensified threatening to make me lose my mind. My salvation from my insanity came in the form of a small herd of deer. I could no longer control the monster within that I had kept at bay for so long. Just as the herd ran by the cave entrance I sprang grabbing a deer by the neck and sank my teeth into the soft buttery hide and straight into the main artery. It was that final act that helped me end my seclusion away from humans.


End file.
